Page 21 - Priorities #50 2011-June/July

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estate vacation rental business, and spending time with our family. Joan and I travel quite a bit together and occasionally with our two married daughters, their husbands and their growing families. One of our daughters is a successful Interior Architect in Los Angles whose projects are featured in TV and national magazines. She is married to an entrepreneur who is the majority owner and CEO of a major software company. Our other daughter is an occupational therapist, whose husband is a Director of Photography for many of the TV shows that we all love. We are an active group. We all love to ski, hike, surf, bike, boat, ride motorcycles, and hang out together in beautiful environments. We also have three granddaughters and are thoroughly enjoying this delightful new addition to our lives.
Are you planning on attending your 50th reunion in September? If so, what are you looking forward to the most?
Most definitely! I am really looking forward to seeing my old school mates. Csaba Hrotko was one of my best friends and I haven’t seen him or Jim Ruffo, Tom Flynn or Whitney Olsen in 50 years! I am also excited to see all the changes that the Priory has gone through. It had very humble beginnings and now I hear it really has developed into a highly respected educational landmark.
Whitney Olson
We were living in the Hillsborough, CA and we heard about this new high school starting up. I had visited Bellarmine, Serra and St Francis High Schools and went to the Priory and met Father Egon. Seemed like a good opportunity and good education.
I started the year being a commuter but then became a dormer. As I recall there were 6 of us that lived in the original farm home. We ate our meals there also. It was a little crowded then but we all got along. When the first dorm was built on the hill I think Father Leopold was the dorm master. He put me at the opposite end of the dormtowatchovertherowdygroup. Wehadagoodtime. Ithink the next dorm master was Fr Malachy Murphy. He was a great priest. It was interesting having an Irish priest in a “Hungarian” Monastery.
Fondest memories
Every year on St Benedict’s day the priests could say three masses. Being a boarder I usually served mass every day. My favorite priest for serving was Fr Pious because he was so fast. On St Benedict’s day I had served two masses and he asked if I wanted to go down
to eat. I said you will be done in 10 minutes father I will serve the third mass.
When there were only a few boarders in the early years, Father Egon would on some occasions take us into town on the weekend to go to a movie. It was a nice break from the tons of studying.
Denny Duff in our class had a home at Sugar bowl so we would as a class take spring breaks skiing with Father Christopher and Father Egon. In those days we had a soccer team. There were so few of us we pretty much all made the soccer team. Since the field was so rocky we would spend half of our workout time picking up rocks off the field. Sure looks different now.
As with all boarding groups and classes there are some things we shouldn’t talk about. In the 4 years at the Priory we
only had one dance that I recall.
My favorite teachers were Father Christopher and Mr. Goode.
My name is Whitney, however Father Egon couldn’t pronounce it, and would always come up to me when I was doing something wrong and say Veetney, Veetney Veetney shaking his hand. I would always smile when he did that.
Now
Our family was in the steamship and later tug and barge industry. I sort of transitioned first with the family company and then with other tug and towing firms.
Right now I am probably doubtful for attending the 50th reunion because of a conflict. I would look forward to seeing some of my classmates and the classmates from the class of 62 -64.